Our girl is 9!

Our best girl in all the world is 9 today. Happy birthday Emily!

A few pictures of her growing up:

Hit By the Recession

Today Andrew was hit by the recession for the first time...

He and I (Kathryn) go run errands frequently.  We have our spots where we know there will be a lollipop for the asking  - the bank, the hair salon, the cleaners.  But today when we got to the cleaners, there were NO LOLLIPOPS!!!  We are only talking Dum-Dums here, but Miss Hilda at Zoots said there was no money in the budget for lollipops anymore...or toilet paper.  She buys her own now.  Andrew was mightily upset...As far as he's concerned the customer service has gone down.  WAY down.  I'm feeling sorry for the employees who have to bring their own squares since the company doesn't have a square to spare!

And now, this may cause a recession at the dentist's since there won't be any cavities to fill...funny how this stuff influences people :-)

Play that funky music, white boy!

Well, yes I'm pretty white (pink in the summertime perhaps), and I like funky music! But that has very little to do with this post.

While reading one of my favorite blogs, the guy quoted Augustine and I loved this quote, which is actually talking about music:

"The soul delights in what is learned indirectly"

What is the link between music and theology? Music is to listen to, to delight in for its own sake. But it still can teach, indirectly, powerfully perhaps.

If you have a few moments, check out the blog entry here:

I'm off to bring up Earth, Wind and Fire on my Nano....

Everyday Choices by Dominic (Kathryn wouldn't be this moody...)

This life is so short, and so full of bewildering choices...

Every day, I’m seized by thoughts of: what should I read today? What should I watch? What should I be listening to? It fills my mind much more often than thoughts of God, thoughts of blessing my family or phoning a friend, thoughts of praying for others in need. I do these from time to time and pat myself on the back for my sterling service…

Those thoughts intrude from time to time, and I may reflect on them with a guilty pause for a moment or two; then I’m distracted again by thoughts of – “Survivor this week! Who’s going to get voted off this week? Or “Amazing Race” on Sunday – it was good last week, wasn’t it?” Or, I must go off to the grocery store, so I can listen to a couple more tracks from that Coldplay album…

On Amazon, they have literally hundreds of novels for me to read! Their recommendations are excellent.  They’ve got enough to keep me entranced for years and years! I’m on “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and it’s good, in fact I’m reading a lot more of that than the Bible, that’s for sure.  There’s so much I should be reading! How about those Economists that keep coming in – I can’t keep up with them!

I’m a distracted 42 year old guy, with my days passing by ever faster. I’d like to project this image that I’m this spiritually mature guy, well-rounded in scripture and a deacon candidate for goodness sake! I just don’t  see it myself – at least not today. I do know God is faithful. He is so faithful. He already knows the end of my story – and my only hope is that I’m wrapped up in Christ.

And a few more photos from our week away...

 This is the first photo Andrew has ever taken - that you've seen anyway.  Super good don't ya think?
This is Dom the human stalactite/stalagmite.  Guess that makes him a column actually...

Dom is the photo chooser of the family.  He keeps the photo albums up to date and annotates them with sweet comments (note to scrapbookers - Dom is the one to invite to the party, not me).  But he leaves out a few ones I would pick every now and then.  He left out these two this time around, and they are just too good to pass up!  Hope you enjoyed!!